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Ask for help > What are the English words which your students are often confused about because of the interference of the mother tongue?
What are the English words which your students are often confused about because of the interference of the mother tongue?
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htaraf
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What are the English words which your students are often confused about because of the interference of the mother tongue?
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Hi everyone, This is the first time I have written here. I have been using eslprintables for a long time, but recently I have found a chance to write here. First of all, I would like to thank the founder and administrator of this website, and of course you for all your valuable contributions. As for my intent to create this post, I wanted to explore your opinions and experiences. As a teacher with five-year experience of teaching, I have often observed that my students are really confused about the meanings of some English words because of the interference of their mother tongue,namely Turkish. I am also a PhD candidate in ELT and I am interested in finding out what English words are misused or what words they are having difficulty in learning because of the differences in the target language and their native language. If you could inform me about them, I would appreciate your help. Have a nice day :))
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25 May 2012
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olaola
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My students get confused with words with Latin roots as they are Italian native speakers
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25 May 2012
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Ide_Bere
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Hi, one word my ss usually have problems with is "molesting", since in spanish molestar translates to disturb, nag, etc, so they use it in that context. I hope that helps. Bere |
25 May 2012
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languaria
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There is one word that drives Germans crazy:
to come = German "kommen" but:
to become = German "werden" , not "bekommen" which means: to receive
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25 May 2012
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rickbell
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For brazilians the verb TO PRETEND is very confunsing because it �s a false friend for the verb PRETENDO in portuguese, which means I intend IN English. Can You imagine the scene? "I prentend to be a good father" |
25 May 2012
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GIOVANNI
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I find that when we teach English to our French Canadian students there is a problem with
"I have and I take ". In French it is "Je prends mon petit d�jeuner " which translates into "I take my breakfast" instead of "I eat or have my breakfast". The students tend to say
"I take my breakfast".
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25 May 2012
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Matthew@ELSP
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This is a fascinating post.
Thanks to all the posters.
I teach in Japan and as someone who spent 2 years in a Japanese-taught-in-Japanese school I can sympathize with people having this problem, and many of my students do.
In English we have some verbs that are stative, for example "I like cake", and not "I am liking cake". In Japanese there are some that are opposite (dynamic verbs).
Conversely, we have some dynamic verbs in English that do change, but do not in Japanese.
For example:
kare ga kuru - he comes / we will come
kare ga kita - he is coming (is not quite here) but is actually the past tense
kare ga kiteiru - he is here (meaning: he has come and is now here, but grammatically the present-continuous: his is coming)
So when the Ss use equivalent English, the sometimes make the stative/dynamic error.
Also some (verbs/nouns/adjectives) words in English exist as words in Japanese but are not grammatically equivalent, so many students use a noun as an adjective, adjective as a noun, and so on.
I hope my contribution is not too vague - I did not want to write too much.
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25 May 2012
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manonski (f)
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To add to Giovanni �s post with French speakers:
They say they "have 15 years old", the literal translation from French
And...
"I am agree" which is also a word for word translation from French
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25 May 2012
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Anna P
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Brazilian students also tend to say "have 15 years old" as we say "tenho 15 anos". Another false friend for us is "push & pull" as "puxe" sounds like "push" but means "pull".
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25 May 2012
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